Night falls. I keep walking. There is a heavy dew condensing all over the grass and all over my skin. I feel clammy and my skin is stretched tight as a drum.

There are two moons; one pink and the other a dusky blue. The salmon-colored moon is full; the darker one is just a thin crescent. Clouds slide over both objects hanging in the sky, like silk sheets sliding over a mattress.

There’s so much beauty in all these worlds. I can see it, but I just can’t appreciate it. Not anymore.

My thighs ache from walking, but I’m afraid to stop moving forward. Some part of my lizard brain just won’t let me stop moving, afraid that if I stop again, I’ll be forced into an even tinier box, trapped in a smaller fishbowl.

The trees are getting patchier, and I’m coming up on the base of a mountain. I’ll have to camp soon, and try to climb to the top tomorrow. I need to get a better sense of where I am, figure out the lay of the land. But my legs won’t stop, they won’t listen to my commands.

I stand, and nearly fall back down again when my eyes fall on something at the base of a nearby tree. Instead of white flowers, there is a headstone carved from granite. It lies flat on the ground, and while it doesn’t look fresh, it’s definitely not old, either.

There are markings carved into the stone, and they are in a language I’ve come to know well.

It’s Margery-speak, our secret traveler’s code made up of scratches and pictures.

The good news: no spears, no trios of diagonal lines. No need to bear arms, no immediate danger.

There are usually a multitude of worlds thrumming under my fingertips. The precise number of exits varies from world to world, but it’s never less than ten. To have no options, no trails to follow…it makes my skin crawl.

I’m in fucking fish bowl, bumping at transparent barriers.

It’s not that I’ve reached the end of the line. It can’t be, things aren’t that clean, that linear out here.

Usually, I can slide between timelines, between worlds. It takes practice, it isn’t always something I can do with a snap of my fingers. But it only takes a matter of seconds, maybe a minute or two, but I rarely need that long now that I have so many months of practice under my belt.

This world is different. I can’t feel the seams, can’t seem to find the way out. I can’t even find the entrance that lead me here.